Giants' Preparation Humbles Moss and Co.

DAVID STEELE

Published 4:00 am, Monday, January 15, 2001

2001-01-15 04:00:00 PDT East Rutherford, N.J. -- Randy Moss's voice was calm, but his words were full of the kind of emotion that naturally follows a seismic event such as the one he and his teammates had just experienced.

"I don't really want to say that Minnesota can't win a Super Bowl," he said in the Vikings' nearly deserted locker room in Giants Stadium. "Some things have to change. I think when it's all said and done, I'm going to win a Super Bowl. I can't really say if it's going to be in Minnesota."

The same, he added, goes for his future Hall of Fame teammate Cris Carter, who has mentioned retirement: "I don't want Cris to come back with his sole reason to win a Super Bowl. It's gonna be hard for us to win one."

After yesterday, who can argue? After all, would you have bet at any time this season -- including just before kickoff of yesterday's NFC Championship Game -- that the Giants would get there before Moss, Carter, Daunte Culpepper and the explosive Vikings?

But there the Giants are, on their way to Tampa thanks to a defense that did what it does well, an offense that couldn't wait to get onto the field, and an opponent that ought to be brought up on fraud charges. It's too bad for the Giants, because they'll continue to face a nation of skeptics that won't give them credit for a genius performance, simply because the team they defeated to get there spent the day on its back, begging to have its belly scratched.

If a game could be worse than the 41-0 score indicates, this was it. Take away Kerry Collins' two interceptions, punch it into the end zone twice from the 1 instead of kicking field goals, and the 1940 title game -- a 73-0 Chicago Bears victory against the Washington Redskins -- would have been in serious jeopardy. And don't think the Giants would have called off the dogs, either. They were so much more prepared for this than the Vikings, that anything less than a pants-down spanking would have seemed unfair.

What could be worse than losing a game this big by a score of 41-0? How they lost. The Giants knew at the beginning of the week what they were going to do, and they had no doubts whatsoever they could do it. Forget the vaunted Vikings offense -- watch what we can do against their defense. We hereby offer our sincerest apologies to the 49ers' defense, which looks like the Steel Curtain compared with what the Vikings put out there yesterday.

"We're coming out throwing, we're coming out throwing. We're not going to try to establish the running game, we're coming out throwing," said Giants coach Jim Fassel, whose tenure has been synonymous with safe, ball-control, low-risk offense. Obviously, he recognized an easy mark when he saw it. He took the chains off Collins, he waved his wideouts downfield, and they collectively left skid marks all over the Vikings' defense.

The Giants expected to carve up the Vikings' defense. They also expected to beat down their offense. They were less surprised by the 41 than they were by the 0. "That's what we get paid for," cornerback Sam Garnes said. "We're a good team. We don't worry about how good the other team is."

Along the way, Fassel -- a guy who had been headed for the unemployment line with five weeks left in the season -- made Dennis Green, the NFL's winningest coach the past nine years, look as if he'd just wandered in from the diner across the freeway. They weren't ready for what the Giants brought. They weren't ready to make adjustments. Worst of all, they weren't ready to even keep the score respectable.

"When it was 31-0 (34-0 actually) at halftime," said Jason Sehorn, grinning as he stood on the paint-and-confetti-covered field afterward, "we knew it wasn't exactly over, but it was over."

Added guard Ron Stone: "It's not like they quit. We were just at a different level than those guys."

Why that was the case is a question the Vikings -- favorites all week long, even on the road, with the weather and field conditions far better than anticipated -- will be pondering the entire offseason. This is the second time in three years the Vikings have come this close only to fold up with no prior warning. Green's 4-8 postseason record will continue to eclipse the regular- season success that got him that far, and it will be harder than ever to defend it.

Moss, as valid as his concerns were, did not exactly back them up with a sterling performance yesterday; he might be football's version of Michael Jordan, but Jordan rarely disappeared as completely as Moss did in the second half, and certainly never played as half-heartedly. A few Vikings players occasionally exchanged punches, shoves and

glares, but collectively they didn't put up much of a fight.

Green took note of all this and more after the game, then said: "There's just no way you think those things are going to happen, especially when, again,

it's not like we're new at this. It's not like we're new in this game."

Yet the Giants, at least these Giants, are new to this. There were almost as many former Giants as current ones on the sideline yesterday, and even they left impressed by a team that, until then, couldn't hold a candle to its predecessors in the public eye. They looked as much like frauds all season as the Vikings did yesterday, and the doubts will linger the more the final score is repeated. It is so preposterous that it's hard to resist slapping the Vikings around rather than praising the Giants.

So maybe Moss' words can be viewed in a different light. Neither he nor the Vikings seem destined for a Super Bowl, because there's a huge blue obstacle in the way -- a no-frills, no-hype, no-respect blue wall that no one has figured out how to scale yet.